(Bonechain journal: citizen Tropical-m3n6Z3ML)
I dreamed about the night Rai stole my screen. I’d gone searching through the mess on my second-year student desk, for that one tablet with project specs on it. It was due the following day. I’d just laid my head down on the worktop in sheer despair, when the wall monitor buzzed.
"Looking for something?" he said. "For shame, Jessyn. What if I’d been a spy?"
(You probably are,) I said back.
My lab report appeared on the screen. Except it wasn't my engineering paper. It was my cortisol level, and the heart rate monitors were still stuck on my arms.
(This is amazing,) Rai said simply. When I didn’t answer, he went on. (You went at it from a completely different angle than I would have. And it worked.)
(Don’t sound so damn surprised,) I muttered.
Then he was in the room with me, somehow at that final graduate lab in Damor city where we'd struggled to finish the capstone project. His red hair glowed in the first sunlight, and the freckles on his cheeks shifted when he smiled.
It was already dawn, another night had slipped by. I was exhausted. Then he kissed me, the way I'd wished, then, for him to still want. Just as I relaxed into the one thing he could do with endless patience, he pulled back out of it.
“I admire you,” he said abruptly. “I don’t say it enough. I shouldn’t have been worried about you making it.”
We were a team. And it lasted longer than anyone predicted.
In the end, though, I hadn't made it.
No, damn it. No.
I'm not going to dwell on this. If there were a single thing it had to teach me, I'd have learned it in this past year of ruminating. We grew apart. People do that. I don't need to keep a record of failure.
I'm deleting this.
...Wait.
I said I could do what I want, as long as I kept this record. Omitting is falsifying. Fine. My whiny dreams can stay in.
Alright. Rai and I had a pact, for about three years. He wanted me before I noticed him, and I wanted him after he'd withdrawn. He had the kind of personality that made me grow, just to keep up. He was beautiful. Freckles all over his body, a dusting of golden hair on his arms and stomach. Absolutely assured, with an intelligence that outstripped some of the professors. I thought the whole thing brought out my best.
He didn't throw it in my face, what he could do that I couldn't master. He didn't have to. He just didn't compromise. And it would have killed me if he had, anyways.
Didn't he believe what I did? No cut corners. That there was a right way and a wrong way to do anything. Do I believe that?
Should I?
We'd both got used to him being the stronger one. He didn't like it when I got taller, started the flight testing, met Pach and everybody else. I still loved him, just as much.
It hurts to remember all this. To record it. What if someone else listens, and thinks I blame Rai?
It's just that, I sort of do.